more blowing – even more blowing – properly a lot of blowing – smoker is out. Damn! So everything again – but this time the Bunsen burner is used. Blowing – blooowing – more blowing – getting dizzy – tipping over – smoker out. Damn. Horst looks on regretfully and just gets his smoker out of the box. His smoker lights right away. Well… we’re still just beginner beekeepers.
But now let’s get to the hive – we don’t have all day.
The goal this time is the spring inspection. So the inspection after winter.
The big questions are:
- Still feed in there?
- too much feed in there?
- moldy feed in there?
- honey in there?
- pollen in there?
- brood in all stages in there?
- loooots of brood in there?
- how many comb lanes are occupied (full of bees)
- is there a disease?{multithumb enable_thumbs=0}
But besides the big questions, there’s also the tedious work waiting. As befits proper bees, our girls have of course deposited wax in the most impossible places during their free time over the long winters and then also used the secret supplies of propolis to glue everything nicely together. And as befits a proper (beginner) beekeeper, we now scrape all this mess off again.
So now let’s get to the boxes. First carefully look under the lid (leave the foil on) – OK bees are in there.
Then separate the upper box from the lower one. To do this, carefully push the hive tool from the back all the way into the side slot on the right side (I don’t have a photo – was too excited) and then lift. Right away blow smoke into the slot so the little bees flee and then check that the lower frames don’t stick to the upper frames. What to do then I don’t know. Pray? Well, ours didn’t stick. Then – without lowering the upper box, remove the entire upper box and set it aside. Mathematically speaking, a normal average beekeeper has four hands. Hive tool, smoker and 17 kilos of box to lift. Congratulations. In the video above you can only see the work on the upper box. Great joy was caused by the 7/8 occupied comb lanes and the large brood nests.
Since American Foulbrood (AFB) is causing trouble in Kiel right now and because we’re supposed to learn something, we do the feed frame sample. A real sample it’s not, of course. Rather, it’s about taking a sample of honey from the feed frame above the brood nest. Horst then sends the honey sample taken to the bee institute. Hopefully that goes well.
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